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a set of personal beliefs

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1002081152

STAY UP LATE WITH SOME HEAT IN MY BODY

thank you dugowsonlopezweinriblevi:

i had some crazy dreams last night. i kept waking up, slightly, and the third time i forced myself to write them down because they were so good. but when i woke up for the last time i realized that i had only dreamed of writing them down. here's what i remember, fragments, fractions, fractals:

i was in my living room with my family, and a meal was set on a tiny table. my whole family, including Millie, was there and as they recited some prayer/grace, i looked down awkwardly with eyes shut, mouth shut, as usual, until the Amen came, which i recited in turn, because i like that word. when i opened my eyes the meal had transformed into something lavish, something that would most likely materialize on thanksgiving or christmas, which made sense because my family doesn't pray openly around meals except on holidays like thanksgiving and maybe christmas.

then the table was cleared and a game of monopoly replaced the food. dice rolled, pieces moved, money exchanged. i, of course, was the banker. but we had trouble getting my dad to stay put. i guess he didn't really feel like playing a game of monopoly with the rest of us and instead felt like making a cappuccino. pretty realistic.

then i slept for another hundred years or so and my dreams switched gears: Dan and i had infiltrated some sort of subway system structured so as to pass over water. at our stop, we nearly snuck out undetected, but stopped to help a group of our enemies, or whoever it was that we had been hiding from, carry a poor fat lady who seemed to have lost all ability to move of her own volition but screamed in pain whenever anybody nudged any of her limbs more than an inch. after we assisted in the transport of this overly sensitive behemoth into an adjacent room, we attempted our exit, again only to be thwarted by the head of this adversarial faction we had been trying to avoid at all costs. he accosted us and demanded we follow him into his office. we had no choice. after giving him our fake names so as to ensure our escape, he checked the names on his computer system, which, though looking like a contraption straight out of the year 3046, appeared to be running Windows 3.1. my name checked out, but Dan's, which was something friar-like, "Father _____" or "Brother _____" or something, just wasn't matching up with the Dan that stood by my side. we started to feel quite nervous and verged on the point of breaking under the increased scrutiny of this headmaster until, at the last moment, he burst out laughing and slapped the machine declaring, "like i'm going to trust this old junk!" meaning that he would let us go. before we departed, i glanced at the monitor hanging by my head (monitors hung everywhere) and saw that it had been rolling the credits for the Mozilla Firefox development team. upon seeing the name "Tori Wolffe," i made a point of making sure everyone knew that this very Tori Wolffe was actually my friend and she had indeed been instrumental in the development of the greatest internet browser in the world.

at last: escape! i floated along a narrow valley, no, fell, plunged, free-fell from the sky towards a narrow valley with Adam, not Dan, to my left, then poof! he initiated his parachute and i followed suit. now we really floated, descending slowly and swiftly into this narrow valley. as we approached the ground, i noticed that someone or something had stockpiled shoes and other articles of clothes into the mountainsides. in fact, they had been placed so meticulously that it took a real keen eye to carve them out of the rock. in fact in fact, i soon realized that these were not mountains of rock at all, but mountains of linens and other textiles!

at that very moment, a whip of gust dragged us out of the valley and far above these small hills to the peak of some far-off mountain, where we landed. in the distance, i spotted an amusement park, and i was soon there. everybody, and i mean everybody (but not really everybody), was trying to get on this epically big rollercoaster. the thing was constantly moving and there were enough seats for everyone but everyone wanted to sit with their friends so you'd climb this skyscraper of a structure, flights and flights of stairs, climbing, climbing, until you decided okay fine i'm happy with this seat i think i'll just sit here and i did. then it took you. imagine the tallest rollercoaster drop you've ever experienced, except twice as tall and you're upside down and instead of going quick as lightning you go in super slow-motion, so slow that you could draw all the faces looking up at you from below, if they had not been but tiny blurs from the distance you soared above them. at one particularly winding turn, a little boy in a bat suit flew up to my face and laughed a little hello, to which i laughed a little wave of my hand at him, which apparently created enough wind to send him careening down to the earth.

what i did this weekend:

1002060652

SHELTER FROM THE STORM / BUCKETS OF RAIN

so here's the story.

i just woke up about half an hour ago from drunk dreams of Joseph Frewer, the catholic church, tits, and constant roadtrips: my friends and i, always, driving here and there and everywhere.

and i woke to a fucking crazy rain.

it's pouring a shallow West and--holy shit: West should be capitalized. North. East. South. and West. the West is the Best. the West is a very definite thing and i believe it to be the Best. i only believe in capitalizing very definite things. besides the title of this blog post, which is all caps for purely aesthetic reasons. also i capitalize things when quoting other people, because who am i to impose my capitalist tendencies on others?

i told my mom about the rain and she texted me "Poetry in motion. Cliche but true." word, mom.

but, seriously, the rain. the rain! listen to it fall. watch it fall. it's like looking into a mirror. it's like watching the sun rise seven billion times a second. it's like swimming in air. i need a rain partner. i want someone to come dance in the rain with me every time it rains. i want to get naked in it and run. even when it's not raining.

do you understand how privileged we are, just to be able to enjoy the rain? i can mean so many things by that statement and i mean all of them.

can i read you a poem? will you listen? are you listening? who is speaking? who is listening? can i read you a poem? can i read you two poems? i promise they're short:

THE ADVANTAGES OF LEARNING

I am a man with no ambitions
And few friends, wholly incapable
Of making a living, growing no
Younger, fugitive from some just doom.
Lonely, ill-clothed, what does it matter?
At midnight I make myself a jug
Of hot white wine and cardamon seeds.
In a torn grey robe and old beret,
I sit in the cold writing poems,
Drawing nudes on the crooked margins,
Copulating with sixteen year old
Nymphomaniacs of my imagination.

I

Take care of this. It's all there is.
You will never get another.

how hard is it to start your own monastery? instead of doing what normal (i hear Adam, others, screaming """""""nOrMaL+?!#?$%?!?$!?$$^^??""""""") people do after they graduate, i just want to create this monastery in San Francisco, but, give me a second. it's hard to describe what i want from this monastery because i want it to closely resemble the universe, whose inhabitants hate and love each other equally and infinitely. basically, lesbians, men, woman, gays, dogs, birds, computers, bros, punks, suits, whatever, whoever will be allowed to join. no restrictions there. and we are tax-exempt because we believe, we believe in each other. and, when we're not buying eggplant and eggs and olives and honey and tea and milk and cheese and rose jam with the money we receive from donations, we write poetry. or listen to music. or talk to each other. but most of us realize that there's not too much to say, so we mostly just sit and think. also, most of us realize that there's not too much to think about, besides everything, so we mostly just sit. except that some of us experience the prods and pokes of the Earth too ungently, so we cannot sit but we can run and jump and climb. and so we stay there our whole lives, feasting on the glory of the stars, with regard to one in particular, and then we'll die, corroding into the ground, dusting off the top layer of this rock and sleeping, while our children play dirty, dirty disco music and stamp their feet on our body.

1001302019

DRUNK ACID FUCKING

~ 1 ~

Aerienne
"I'll take this one."
All poetry is autobiography.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
if going is going and going is gone
then where are we glowing
from the effects of the flash
FLUCK FASH
I did not ash
with my crayon laden hand
like a dense cigarette
ONE SPEACIAL (so fuckin' postmodern)

LISTENING TO PPL TALK
IS POETRY IN AND OF
ITSELF

This is the idea that I have
but um errrrrrrrrrr
Fuck other people
they're not saying anything

We always talk about
things
Dude Uh ha ha
Silent
I don't think it's possible,
the green that is called
green
LIME GREEN
pintree road, gingery
train stops to get off
the name
vie come back
dude
I LOVE

Eat my shit

Write me a poem
I forgot,
there is a camera
behind my ear
yellow:
make it its own pain
give everything its
own page
Another
Demension
Indoor

You did this:
Green and blue and
aquaramine
I am tripping
energy, oh my
god
THEY WONT STOP

last time
I was in a nice place
I really want a keytar
Human beings
Are wired in specific ways
8th grade: I wore
this sweater is
what I wore
A writer is someone
egotistical
My mind is so mystical
USUALLY
(is anyone else
having trouble
speaking)

the sound of
people
moving
the sound of
me moving
--your life is a big
laughing
butterfly
The cap fell
off
I always have troubling
thoughts
because I am a
madman
the big ball of paper

IT'S MY JOURNAL

we are artists
I might move
is part of
the me

My vision
My dreams are my
vision
close your eyes and
everything stops,
except
this.

I need
that
wine
because
I need
to
drink
BRB

This is what your
hair looked like
moving back
and
forth

Fix it?
What is
there to
fix
I can't watch the
words bein

She is just
transcribing
the universe
and I
am too
in different
mediums

I'm experiencing
MY SENSES
sight sound
taste touch
smell

we are creating
on planet
bed
We are always
creating
It doesn't
have a
predesignated
dotted
frame

climates are places where
we all feel the same
people know each other
best in places where
the temperature doesn't
fluctuate
Holy fuck
thats Ronny
fail

my names
are
the atoms
in the
atmosphere
TRIP

If you
take
a trip
you come
back to
the place
where you

LIfe is one
big
round
trip
where is
my

EXPLODE

~~ 2 ~~

Thurs, March 4 -- New American Poetry
Kerouac, Carso; Lawrence Ferlenghetti

I journal
I journey
dimensionless
spaces of probabity
yes yes only yes
my pen thinks
affirmity

if only there was a day in which I
could play but if in a daze I
can create little daisies
bed angels

Ronny is God
we are creatures on planet bed
writing his bibles
usually.
different thoughts at
the same location
there's so many stimulations
I don't know what
predesignated dotted
frame
I forgot that I have to be
in that window reality
the ultimate celestial divinity

makes tripod triquestrians
trees winding
I forgot everything
about
losing touch with
my mind
hotness
is
my face

hotness is my face
as if it is on fire
but I also wrote
that
IM ON FIRE

IM ON FIRE

IM ON FIRE

IM

ON

FIRE

IM

ON

FIRE

your nose reminds me
of a mountain I once saw
it meant everything that
I wanted it to mean
everything in analog
I wine have not
me have it

I am Albert Einstein

I cant not

YAH

postmodernism
is
anti-
analog
can I hold it
while it burns
CAREFUL ! It burns
while you hold it
my letters cant make
letters

sensations

I LOVE EVERYONE
I WANT TO BE
WITH EVERYONE
BECAUSE
brugs are the universal counterculture

IM
HAPPENING
what is it like to
be like
everyone

oh here
is where
I was
Eureka!
I AM YOU
BAH RAM EWE
Barack opoma
I want to see you writing
but I cant

zagizagizzigzip
Leonardo I have a
Leonardo on Hardo
you ache of me
you reak of me.

BUT BLUE

because purple
you cant tune
in to too many
channels
the visions of
tunnels
caressing
careening
Im dreaming
I'm dreaming
massaging
it swallows
for the doves that have come
rummage hat sha cant
manage my hollows
How can we both write
poems when
the acid mind
purple
WHEN

one way trip
round trip
THE SISTINE CHAPEL
Life is one
big
round
trip
60s
porn

If I could tell you
where I just went
its too far
away
I want to
add
that my
name
is fairly
unimportant
in the
"The mirror sees "The mirror sees
everything that greater everything that
we can't." context we can."
-- aerienne of the universe -- ronny
and how are you today, sir?"

1001282108

SEEING

i've just got to cut off a part of my body.

Peeping through my keyhole I see within the range of only about thirty percent of the light that comes from the sun; the rest is infrared and some little ultraviolet, perfectly apparent to many animals, but invisible to me. A nightmare network of ganglia, charged and firing without my knowledge, cuts and splices what I do not see, editing it for my brain. Donald E. Carr points out that the sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: "This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is."

i don't know if it's true, but i've generally assumed it to be true. kind of. my version of this hypothesis is that the closer to death you are, the more limited your passages of perception, the more of the universe you perceive. therefore, while humans "see" markedly less of the universe than do amoebas, so too do amoebas "see" markedly less of the universe than do rocks. black holes can see everything. and it turns out that everything is so fucking colorful, blissful, and downright scrumptious that black holes try to suck in as much of it as possible. greedy beasts.

I walked home in a shivering daze, up hill and down. Later I lay open-mouthed in bed, my arms flung wide at my sides to steady the whirling darkness. At this latitude I'm spinning 836 miles an hour round the earth's axis; I often fancy I feel my sweeping fall as a breakneck arc like the dive of dolphins, and the hollow rushing of wind raises hair on my neck and the side of my face. In orbit around the sun I'm moving 64,800 miles an hour. The solar system as a whole, like a merry-go-round unhinged, spins, bobs, and blinks at the speed of 43,200 miles an hour along a course set east of Hercules. Someone has piped, and we are dancing a tarantella until the sweat pours. I open my eyes and I see dark, muscled forms curl out of water, with flapping gills and flattened eyes. I close my eyes and I see stars, deep stars giving way to deeper stars, deeper stars bowing to deepest stars at the crown of an infinite cone.

and that's why i love Annie Dillard.

today i attended a talk given by a past professor of mine, James Kuzner, who elaborated on queer theory and economics of surplus and such and such in regards to Shakespeare's play, "Timon of Athens." i maybe understood about 1/8 of his words, it was seriously so beyond my powers of comprehension. when faculty started posing questions to the speaker, they rose like Olympians in my mind, they were beings of rational exhilaration, their own neurons whizzing at speeds exceeding a measly 43,200 miles an hour. i felt like a fool. but, nonetheless, a conscious fool.

In the great meteor shower of August, the Perseid, I wail all day for the shooting stars I miss. They're out there showering down, committing hara-kiri in a flame of total attraction, and hissing perhaps at last into the ocean. But at dawn what looks like a blue dome clamps down over me like a lid on a pot. The stars and planets could smash and I'd never know. Only a piece of ashen moon occasionally climbs up or down the inside of the dome, and our local star without surcease explodes on our heads. We have really only that one light, one source for all power, and yet we must turn away from it by universal decree. Nobody here on the planet seems aware of this strange, powerful taboo, that we all walk about carefully averting our faces, this way and that, lest our eyes be blasted forever.

school is unhealthy for me. i think too much or too little. talk too much or too little. all these people saying things and i wonder, does she really mean that? all these people doing things and i wonder, is that really what he wants to do? i walk four feet and, realizing i'm going to die, start choking violently, drop all my books, fall to the ground and puke all my organs out. they're black and scorching, fizzing on the ground while my skin shell rocks in spasms underneath a wooden bench i crawled to in my anguish, and that's when i finally decide to look straight at the only real deity we have ever known: the sun. it says, "you may ask me one question." i do not respond immediately. in fact, i lie there, organless, under that bench for about 6 millennia, until i finally open my mouth and make a gesture with my hands as if about to finally ask my question, and, as the sun leans forward in anticipation, i am happily burnt to an irreversible crisp, banished forever to the truth only found in vacuums. sometimes i feel like i need a really big break and then i realize that it's coming, but it's not quite what i've imagined it to be.

But I can't go out and try to see this way. I'll fail, I'll go mad. All I can do is try to gag the commentator, to hush the noise of useless interior babble that keeps me from seeing just as surely as a newspaper dangled before my eyes. The effort is really a discipline requiring a lifetime of dedicated struggle; it marks the literature of saints and monks of every order East and West, under every rule and no rule, discalced and shod. The world's spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally that the mind's muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash, cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness. Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness; you raise your sights; you look along it, mildly, acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects and rest purely, without utterance. "Launch into the deep," says Jacques Ellul, "and you'll see."

i'll try that.

1001272236

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALIANA

Aliana is this super cute sweetie that i threw a birthday for last night.

basically, i left table manners with a bunch of friends, but sort of rabidly didn't leave with them but rather ahead of them. and when i turned around to see if the creatures were following, i instead saw the birthday girl, who came back to the afterparty and was merry. tainted! taken on! shared! singled! romanced! phantomed! consented! planet rocked? disco balled in the face.

and then i went for a drive and got a fucking nail in my tire.

you think you're cruising, cruising, cruising, and then BAM! you're drinking to joe biden's mug. either way, i already know i'm on the wrong side:

Of the people there are some who say:
"We believe in God and the Last Day,
But they do not (really) believe.

Fain would they deceive
God and those who believe,
But they only deceive themselves,
And realize (it) not!

In their hearts is a disease;
And God has increased their disease:
And grievous is the penalty they (incur)
Because they are false (to themselves).

When it is said to them: "Make not mischief on the earth,"
They say: "Why, we only
Want to make peace!"

"Of a surety, they are the ones
Who make mischief,
But they realize (it) not.

When it is said to them:
"Believe as the others believe:"
They say: "Shall we believe
As the fools believe?"--
Nay, of a surety they are the fools,
But they do not know.

When they meet those who believe,
They say: "We believe;"
But when they are alone
With their evil ones,
They say: "We are really with you:
We (were) only jesting."

God will throw back
Their mockery on them,
And give them rope in their trespasses;
So they will wander like blind ones
(To and fro),

These are they who have bartered
Guidance for error:
But their traffic is profitless,
And they have lost true direction,

Their similitude is that of a man
Who kindled a fire;
When it lighted all around him,
God took away their light
And left them in utter darkness.
So they could not see.

Deaf, dumb, and blind,
They will not return (to the path).
Or (another similitude)
Is that of a rain-laden cloud
From the sky: in it are zones
Of darkness, and thunder and lightning:
They press their fingers in their ears
To keep out the stunning thunder-clap,
The while they are in terror of death.
But God is ever round
The rejecters of Faith!

The lightning all but snatches away
Their sight; every time the light
Helps them, they walk therein,
And when the darkness grows on them,
They stand still.
And if God willed, He could take away
Their faculty of hearing and seeing;
For God hath power over all things.

see? they're saying the same things about us that we're saying about them! see:

last night i went to this place where all the people (of some arbitrary institution) could dance, all the people (of some arbitrary age limit) could drink, where all the people could have a real good time together. down in the velvet underground.

but tonight i went to the place next door, where only some people could dance, only some people could drink, and only a sad minority could have a real good time together. up in the silk heaven.

putrid blasphemous fiends, they terrorize this planet. demons obsessed with the corrosive sting of power, an ever-growing, ever-distant thing of desire. shunning freedom, these brazen hunters scour their crippled reality for the dirtiest of work, clawing through fields, seeking out shackleless beings.

but they're saying the same things about us, see?

see!

1001252109

THESE ARE THE MUSIC AND PICTURES OF THE MOST ANCIENT RELIGION

that's a Ralph Waldo Emerson quotation extracted from underneath a collection of words written by John Muir on how "All the World Seems a Church":

This I may say is the first time I have been at church in California, led here at last, every door graciously opened for the poor lonely worshipper. In our best times everything turns into religion, all the world seems a church and the mountains altars.

i've often felt this exact thing. open the religious text of your choosing to any page and marvel at the astounding quantity of ALLs and EVERYTHINGs and ONEs that human beings have lassoed into one small section for the purpose of representing the omnipresence and pervasiveness of God. would the world be different if everybody followed in Muir's footsteps and bowed in Nature's Temple, instead of at the Temple of Athena/God/Hubbard?

You are going on a strange journey this time, my friend. I don't envy you. You'll have a hard time keeping your heart light and simple in the midst of this crowd of madmen. Instead of the music of the wind among the spruce-tops and the tinkling of the waterfalls, your ears will be filled with the oaths and groans of these poor, deluded, self-burdened people. Keep close to Nature's heart, yourself; and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean from the earth-stains of this sordid, gold-seeking crowd in God's pure air. It will help you in your efforts to bring to these people something better than gold. Don't lose your freedom and your love of the Earth as God made it.

i don't think i've lost my freedom or my love of the Earth. in fact, i think every year my freedom doubles and my love triples. check up on me in a year, if you'd like. at the phrase "better than gold," my already well-trained ears of CA poetry ring like buzzers, but i don't want to rush to class to share my revelation. i want to run north, to the mountains, never to be found again:

Although I was four years at the University, I did not take the regular course of studies, but instead picked out what I thought would be most useful to me, particularly chemistry, which opened a new world, and mathematics and physics, a little Greek and Latin, botany and geology. I was far from satisfied with what I had learned, and should have stayed longer. Anyhow I wandered away on a glorious botanical and geological excursion, which has lasted nearly fifty years and is not yet completed, always happy and free, poor and rich, without thought of a diploma or of making a name, urged on and on through endless, inspiring, Godful beauty.

But I was only leaving one University for another, the Wisconsin University for the University of the Wilderness.

can i do the same? could i do the same? what are the costs? i am no knave when it comes to shopping for an education to not see that every institution has its costs. will the Wilderness accept me? where will i live? how will i live? will i make new friends? how long is a term? does poetry exist in nature?

No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull, or any trace of what in manufactories is called rubbish or waste; everything is perfectly clean and pure and full of divine lessons. This quick, inevitable interest attaching to everything seems marvelous until the hand of God becomes visible; then it seems reasonable that what interests God may well interest us. When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping to speak to the plants and animals as friendly fellow mountaineers. Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go; for the mountains are fountains--beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.

perhaps my question might be better restated as "can poetry exist outside of nature?" we, it, one. how can we write about that which exists outside of nature when we, it, live within it, through it, by it, with it, and for it. it is why we are we. as time goes on and i see my blank page with space increase, i realize the futility of my own words and wonder at the quaking confidence in the language of this famous mountain man.

At half-past two o'clock of a moonlit morning in March, I was awakened by a tremendous earthquake, and though I had never before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange thrilling motion could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin, both glad and frightened, shouting, "A noble earthquake!" . . . as if Nature were wrecking her Yosemite temple, and getting ready to build a still better one.

[To calm one visitor's fears] I said, "Come, cheer up; smile a little and clap your hands, now that kind Mother Earth is trotting us on her knee to amuse us and make us good." In this work of beauty, every boulder is prepared and measured and put in its place more thoughtfully than are the stones of temples. If for a moment you are inclined to regard these taluses as mere draggled, chaotic dumps, climb to the top of one of them, and run down without any haggling, puttering hesitation, boldly jumping from boulder to boulder with even speed. You will then find your feet playing a tune, and quickly discover the music and poetry of these magnificent rock piles--a fine lesson; and all Nature's wildness tells the same story--the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush or sap in plants, storms of every sort--each and all are the orderly beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart.

take that, Haiti.

oh, but i'm only kidding. that's not at all what Muir meant. he means that only natural disasters in natural places, like Yosemite, are beautiful. in human places, like San Francisco and Haiti, they are tragedies. in Yosemite, Nature places her boulders more carefully than a skilled chess player places his queen. in Haiti, Nature just wasn't paying attention. she had been idly waiting to go to lunch with her best friend, Time, when her elbow had slipped off the table, irritating her funny bone to immeasurable ends; in her squealing and cursing, 150,000 people dove into the soil, eyes gagged, ears blinded.

It seems strange that visitors to Yosemite should be so little influenced by its novel grandeur, as if their eyes were bandaged and their ears stopped. Most of those I saw yesterday were looking down as if wholly unconscious of anything going on about them, while the sublime rocks were trembling with the tones of the mighty chanting congregation of waters gathered from all the mountains round about, making music that might draw angels out of heaven. Yet respectable-looking, even wise-looking people were fixing bits of worms on bent pieces of wire to catch trout. Sport they called it. Should church-goers try to pass the time fishing in baptismal fonts while dull sermons were being preached, the so-called sport might not be so bad; but to play in the Yosemite temple, seeking pleasure in the pain of the fishes struggling for their lives, while God is preaching the sublimest water and stone sermons!

did somebody say sublime? words associated with the sublime: grandeur, unconscious, anything, sublime, rocks, trembling, tones, mighty, chanting, congregation, waters, mountains, music, angels, heaven, worms, trout, fonts, sermons, Yosemite, temple, pleasure, pain, struggling, lives, God, sublimest, water, stone, sermons. words not associated with the sublime:. words: Bouree, Handel, Jeanne, Lamon, Music, for, the, Royal, Fireworks, 7, 1749. word: n., a sound, usually one with a semantic association. semantics: the study of the study. study: the lack of sheer silence.

When the avalanche started I threw myself on my back and spread my arms to try to keep from sinking. Fortunately, though the grade of the canyon is very steep, it is not interrupted by precipices large enough to cause outbounding or free plunging. On no part of the rush was I buried. I was only moderately embedded on the surface or at times a little below it, and covered with a veil of back-streaming dust particles; and as the whole mass beneath and about me joined in the flight there was no friction, though I was tossed here and there and lurched from side to side. When the avalanche swedged and came to rest I found myself on top of the crumpled pile without a bruise or scar. This was a fine experience . . . This flight in what might be called a milky way of snow-stars was the most spiritual and exhilarating of all the modes of motion I have ever experienced. Elijah's flight in a chariot of fire could hardly have been more gloriously exciting.

"[And after the wind, the avalanche, the earthquake, the fire] a sound of sheer silence." ~Elijah

1001241525

JESUS CHRIST

do you ever suffer delusions of grandeur? have you ever convinced yourself that you're stronger than everyone else? that you're smarter than everyone else? that you know one key fact about the universe that everyone else has either forgotten or never discovered? that people need you? that you don't need anyone? have you ever been certain that you are the only thing worth existing?

and then it dawns on you: you are nothing.

you pour strange colors down your throat, wrap yourself in dead things, and retreat into your leaf house. an animal. you are not worth anything, you are not a great artist, you are not the messiah, you are an animal. meow!

i had a strange/excellent/fun weekend.

on friday night, Evan threw a STOP MAKING SENSE party in his suite and the talking heads attended en masse. what do you call a dance party where you cannot move your individual corpse, but instead must sweat and sway with the collective body? not really a dance party. people improvised: dancing on tables, crowdsurfing, dancing outside on the balcony, chilling in the bathroom, chilling in the hallway, chilling on the balcony, chilling in the refrigerator. chilled with Shanleigh for a lot, saw Emma for the first time since i've been back--that led to a whirlwind tour of bouncy bounty in my room, before we went back to Evan's for some last-minute late-night dancing. all-around weird disco night.

"The less we say about it the better, we'll make it up as we go along...it's okay, I know nothing's wrong!"

last night did not look promising for fun times. but for some reason i never doubted where it would take me. i had 0 plans, though i had refused a couple invitations. Allison asked me to be her date to formal, but i have become quite stubborn in my later years and replied to her with a general "eh.." soon after seeing the girls off, however, the same good Evan from above called me up, asking me if i cared to join him for free beer at dom's lounge, the same dom's lounge where the girls had just departed to for their cute little formal.

so Evan and i, sneakered jeaned teed and sweatshirted, crashed the party with little reservations and, later, little regret. the beer and champagne and conversation flowed like the Anduin, and i began to convince myself that the less dressed up you were the more fun you were having. it's nice when the thoughts benefit the thinker. once the river ran dry, we recruited some choice hedonists, grabbed our fair share of apple cider, m&ms, oreos, and chocolate chip cookies, and made our exit (just as S/O was turning up the 40 greatest hits in the whole goddamn world)!

It was told that even as Varda ended her labours, and they were long when first Menelmacar strode up the sky and the blue frie of Helluin flickered in the mists above the borders of the world, in that hour the Children of the Earth awoke, the Firstborn of Illuvatar. By the starlit mere of Cuivienen, Water of Awakening, they rose from the sleep of Illuvatar; and while they dwelt yet silent by Cuivienen their eyes beheld first of all things the stars of heaven. Therefore they have ever loved the starlight, and have revered Varda Elentari above all the Valar.

Long they dwelt in their first home by the water under stars, and they walked the Earth in wonder; and they began to make speech and to give names to all things that they perceived. Themselves they named the Quendi, signifying those that speak with voices; for as yet they had met no other living things that spoke or sang.

that is to say, we sang and spoke and smoked late in Evan's room, while teetering between Person Pitch, post-disco, and everything in between.

1001221221

WE ARE

Alive!

1001202145

LA VOZ

can you tell i have too much time on my hands?

What the Bullet Sang -- Bret Harte

O joy of creation
                        To be!
O rapture to fly
                        And be free!
Be the battle lost or won,
    Though its smoke shall hide the sun,
I shall find my love--The one
Born for me!

I shall know him where he stands,
                        All alone,
With the power in his hands
                        Not o'erthrown;
I shall know him by his face,
    By his god-like front and grace;
I shall hold him for a space,
                        All my own!

It is he--O my love!
                        So bold!
It is I--All thy love
                        Foretold!
It is I. O love what bliss!
    Dost thou answer to my kiss?
Oh! sweetheart, what is this!
                        Lieth there so cold!

The Poet -- Yone Noguchi

Out of the deep and the dark,
A sparkling mystery, a shape,
Something perfect,
Comes like the stir of the day:
One whose breath is an odor,
Whose eyes show the road to stars,
The breeze in his face,
The glory of heaven on his back.
He steps like a vision hung in air,
Diffusing the passion of eternity;
His abode is the sunlight of morn,
The music of eve his speech:
In his sight,
One shall turn from the dust of the grave,
And move upward to the woodland.

I Have Cast the World -- Yone Noguchi

I have cast the world,
          and think me as nothing.
Yet I feel cold on snow-falling day,
And happy on flower day.

A Rational Anthem -- Ambrose Bierce

My country, 'tis of thee
Sweet land of felony,
    Of thee I sing--
Land where my fathers fried
Young witches and applied
Whips to the Quaker's hide
    And made him spring.

My knavish country, thee,
Land where the thief is free,
    Thy laws I love;
I love thy thieving bills
That tap the people's tills;
I love thy mob whose will's
    All laws above.

Let Federal employees
And rings rob all they please,
    The whole year long.
Let office-holders make
Their piles and judges rake
Our coin. For Jesus' sake,
    Let's all go wrong!

1001202059

COSA NUESTRA

"By April 1906, as the case against Ruef and his colleagues was being prepared, photographs of San Francisco revealed an articulated cityscape of multistoried office buildings along Market Street; a grand city hall near Market Street and Van Ness Avenue; cable cars running up and down hills past ornate Italianate residences; warehouses and factories in the South of Market district; the looming Palace Hotel at Market and New Montgomery, a new hotel, the St. Francis, facing Union Square, and the nearly completed Fairmont Hotel atop Nob Hill; the spires of churches and synagogues everywhere; a grand ferry terminal at the foot of Market Street surmounted by a tower based on the Giralda Tower of Seville; streetcars serving the major streets; block upon block of newly constructed homes in the Castro, Eureka Valley, and Western Addition neighborhoods; gardens and statuary and a great glass conservatory in Golden Gate Park; and steamships and square-riggers crowding the Embarcadero waterfront. Truly, this was the realization of Higher Provicincialism as Royce had envisioned it: not the predominant city in the United States, to be sure, but a ranking American city complete in each aspect of its urbanism, filled with a talented and diverse population, served by four major newspapers, with the great Enrico Caruso even then appearing in Carmen at the Mission Opera House. The morning edition of the Chronicle had already appeared late on the evening of the seventeenth of April. After the opera and the other entertainments let out, the lights continued to burn at such restaurants and resorts as Jack's, Zinkand's, the Savoy Tripoli, Coppa's, the Fior d'Italia, Mayes' Oyster House, the Poodle Dog, and the drinking establishments along the Cocktail Route on Kearny Street before the city went fully to sleep.

"At 5:12:05 on the morning of Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the Pacific and North American tectonic plates suddenly sprang over and from nine to twenty-one feet past each other along the 290 miles of the San Andreas fault. Shock waves sped across the terrain at 7,000 miles per hour. The first quake to hit San Francisco (8.3 on the Richter scale, it would later be estimated) shook the city in two phases for forty-five seconds. Within the hour, there would be seventeen serious aftershocks. City Hall and numerous other unreinforced brick buildings, together with many crowded tenements south of Market Street, collapsed instantly. Facades fell from homes, revealing the furniture within. Less sturdy homes crumpled completely."

"Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone." -- Jack London

1001201709

BEFORE NIGHT FALLS

hold a gun to your head.

not a real gun: your hand
in the shape of a gun pointed at your head.

repeat after me.

this is my government.
if i do not obey, i am imprisoned.
this is my king.
if i do not obey, i am beheaded.
this is my god.
if i do not obey, i'm fucked.

this is my government.
this is my governor.
i am the governed and
this is my government.

eddies of consciousness block my path
i am pathless
i am blocked
i am conscious
eddies of consciousness block my path and
the girl says, "leap!"

"that's what i did," she says. i
am not you nor will i ever
be you. do you
see my government? i am pointing
straight at it.

bang! and my left foot dives
into a west coast ocean of poetry.
mar adentro. can you
see inside my thoughts? my
foot is wet and i am cold.

and i think, i love the rain.
and i think, my, what a luxury, to have such shelter, such warmth, such comfort stowed away, so as to be able to love the rain.
and i think, rain is good poetry weather.

1001191716

ONLY MY BEST FRIENDS USE THE COKE POT CRACK READY!

let it be known that on the eighteenth birthday of my younger brother, i attended the very first class of my last semester at Pomona College.

California Poetry: doesn't it sound like the English department specifically designed this class for me? ICEBREAKER! after handing out The Great Seal of the State of California, professor asked that we go around saying our name, school, and the one thing we would add/change/remove from the Seal:

ronny, Pomona, and i'd add a bunch of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs on laptops hooked up to each other. stick a joint in Minerva's mouth. get some film teams in there somewhere. oh! and burritos! HELLA burritos.

i'm really excited for this class. fully titled "A Made Place: California Poetry," the class will be "examining the myths, landscapes, histories, philosophies and Californias produced" by California poetry from the late 19th-century to this very day. yes, the very day you read this post. now. here. right now. right here. check out this poem we read today by Joaquin Miller:

CALIFORNIA'S CUP OF GOLD

The golden poppy is God's gold,
  The gold that lifts, nor weighs us down;--
The gold that knows no miser's hold,
  The gold that banks not in the town,
But singing, laughing, freely spills
Its hoard far up the happy hills;
Far up, far down, at every turn,--
What beggar has not gold to burn!

i hope i'm not burnt out on reading from the break. not bragging or anything, i swear. just happy. content. fulfilled, and still filling. i can't speak for everyone, but i know how i like to eat my clam chowder in a bread bowl: sip until you've lowered it a layer, tear off the bread, dip, repeat. reading books, listening to music, watching film, consuming art and life are the opposite: pour in until filled to the brim (contentment), add another layer of bread if more chowder is on the way, re-fill. contentment fulfillment excitement chill chill chill. i'm happy right now.

speaking of reading, i've started the Silmarillion, in my continued obsession with Tolkien. i'm pretty excited, but it will probably be the last thing i read by him for awhile. i first opened the book a couple days ago, but so far i've only read the foreword by his son, Christopher Tolkien, and the preface, which includes a very long letter from J. R. R. Tolkien to his friend Milton Waldman, at that time an editor at the publishing house of Collins. according to Christopher, "the context and occasion of this letter lay in the painful differences that arose over [his] father's insistence that The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings should be published 'in conjunction or in connexion' 'as one long saga of the Jewels and the Rings.'"

makes me glad i'm reading it so soon after completing the trilogy. i don't feel like intelligently weaving these into this post, but i still wanted to share them with you: here are some select passages from Tolkien's letter.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write. But I have never stopped, and of course, as a professional philologist (especially interested in linguistic aesthetics), I have changed in taste, improved in theory, and probably in craft.

As I say, the legendary Silmarillion is peculiar, and differs from all similar things that I know in not being anthropocentric. Its centre of view and interest is not Men but 'Elves'. Men come in inevitably: after all the author is a man, and if he has an audience they will be Men and Men must come in to our tales, as such, and not merely transfigured or partially represented as Elves, Dwarfs, Hobbits, etc. But they remain peripheral - late comers, and however growingly important, not principals.

The chief of the stories of The Silmarillion, and the one most fully treated is the Story of Beren and Luthien the Elfmaiden. Here we meet, among other things, the first example of the motive (to become dominant in Hobbits) that the great policies of world history, 'the wheels of the world', are often turned not by the Lords and Governors, even gods, but by the seemingly unknown and weak - owing to the secret life in creation, and the part unknowable to all wisdom but One, that resides in the intrusions of the Children of God into the Drama.

Three Rings for the Elven-Kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie.

last night Meryl and i began our epic Peter Jackson film festival, and halfway through i had a bit of a fantastical breakdown. the movie flies so quickly and irregularly through Tolkien's brilliantly laid stories that i almost felt the wind knocked out of me and i almost felt as if there were no magic in our world worth filming. i got over it. but seriously, the best thing from the film adaptations: